A few weeks ago I wrote on a free PDF that Jimmy Sweeney from Career Jimmy has created to help you write better resumes.

Today I’d like to share another free PDF that he’s written to help you with your cover letter.

Many people dislike writing cover letters and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they are perhaps unaware of how to write them well.

Check out Jimmy’s free PDF called Top Ten Secrets of The World’s Greatest Cover Letter and learn about some excellent tips he has written to write better cover letters.

Among other things he discusses the ideal length of your cover letter, the importance of properly addressing the person you’re writing to and probably most important the one thing that people often forget to ask for in their cover letter.

When it comes to career-related products on the Net, there are certainly plenty to choose from but whether or not they work is another story. I’ve read plenty of so-called career experts who when you look at it don’t necessarily offer anything worth paying for.

One of the better career resources that I’m aware of is the Amazing Cover Letters product from Jimmy Sweeney.

If you’re the type of person who finds it hard to write about yourself or write cover letters specifically this might be a resource for you to check out. Jimmy’s product has been around for a number of years now and I recall trading a few emails with him a couple of years back asking him about the product and what makes it a success. He has spent an number of years working on it and perfecting it and offers some interesting testimonials and comments that might shed light on why it’s helped other people with their careers and job searches.

Jimmy’s website does a good job of explaining the product and why you might consider using it if you’re having trouble writing cover letters or want to do a better job of it.

Writing a resume cover letter can be a difficult task for many people particularly if they’re not great writers, don’t know what to write, or simply misinterpret what the purpose of the cover letter is.

Full disclosure: I typically don’t even bother reading cover letters when I get one from a candidate applying for a job because I’m so used to reading form letters that often aren’t even updated for the specific job they’re applying for that they serve no real purpose. In other words, I’m so jaded and expect that the cover letter is going to suck, I other skim it quickly or don’t even bother reading it at all.

The purpose of the cover letter other than showing the potential hiring manager a sample of your written communication skills is to illustrate above and beyond your resume why they should interview you.

In other words, what do you have in your background that fits the job you’re applying or and why should they interview you over the dozens or hundreds of other candidates who have applied for the same job?

Typically though the cover letters I read are simply a copy and paste job of the person’s job description or are simply copied and pasted segments of their resume which doesn’t serve any purpose since then you’re just repeating a section of your resume twice.

There are many schools of thought as to what a resume cover letter should contain so rather than rehashing them, here’s a better idea.

If you’re open to checking out a resume cover letter resource that might help you write the cover letters you wished you could write, check out this interesting resource.

The purpose of the cover letter is to help you get the interview but you can’t do that unless your letter (and resume) gets read. This resource might just help you do that if you’re applying for jobs and not getting interviews.

On another website I run, I give visitors the opportunity to submit their own career objective to my site and have me (and other visitors to the site) critique it to help them improve it.

The topic “Career Objective” is by far the most popular topic on this website by the way… I’m not sure why but it is! If you’re interested, here is one of the most popular pages on the subject.

Today I received a submission from someone who sent me a very generic Career Objective and in the section where they can add their desired Job Title, they simply put “BBA.”

I have absolutely no idea what kind of job BBA is and I simply don’t have the desire to Google search it and try to figure it out and I suspect most people reading this guy’s resume won’t bother either. In other words, he’s already turned them off by using an acronym that some/many/most people don’t know the meaning of.

Using short forms should also be avoided especially in formal documents like cover letters and resumes. Last week, I received a Career Objective submission from a woman who referred to herself as a “Sr. Business Analyst” instead of “Senior Business Analyst.” Saving a couple of keystrokes and typing Sr. instead of Senior just doesn’t look good and really doesn’t serve any purpose. Spell it out properly in full.

In your resume, cover letter and other correspondence with people who can influence your career, watch out when using industry jargon that not everyone is familiar with. Remember that it could be an HR person, a recruiter or even someone in your chosen line of business reading your resume who doesn’t know the acronyms but can still have an important hand in deciding your fate. If you swamp them with acronyms, they may not bother wasting time figuring out what they mean.

As we’ve already discussed, many people these days consider a “job search” to be a matter of firing off dozens of resumes in response to jobs that they’ve seen online on various job boards. The issue of course is that it’s just as easy for everyone else to do the same thing so ultimately, the hiring manager receiving these emails might simply choose to ignore the (possibly) hundreds of submissions they get and look for a more effective way to hire someone.

In other words, if you email your resume to someone, does someone actually read it?

With spam filters these days, they might not even receive it.

In the old days – that would be up to the early to late 1990s – it wasn’t uncommon to mail or fax your resume to a hiring manager and then receive a letter in the mail several weeks later in response to acknowledge that they’d received your application!

You’d actually get a written response and not an automatic form email as is common these days. It felt like you were actually dealing with a human being at the other end.

It didn’t mean you were getting the job or even an interview but it did somehow feel you had made some progress. Now of course, it takes far less time and effort to email a resume than it did to print out, address, stamp and then mail a resume to the same person.

Of course, this also means that you may not have to worry about all the stuff we used to worry about when mailing a resume:

• Should I use colored or white paper?
• Should I use heavy stock paper or can I use the cheaper stuff?
• Should I hand write or type the address on the envelope?
• Should I include a cover letter?

These days, things tend to be spelled out a bit more than before. Jobs that you view online often tell you exactly what you need to apply for the job and many companies utilize online systems that enable them to decide what they want from you ie. Resume? Cover letter? Written answers to certain questions?

In that regard, when applying for jobs, the best thing to do is to follow the instructions you are given and give them what they’re asking for. Even if they don’t specifically ask for a cover letter, you can include one to not only give them a sample of your writing but more importantly to illustrate things not evident in your resume that show the reader why you are someone they need to interview. As a recruiter, I often speed read cover letters just to see what’s in there and to check the spelling, grammar, etc which can give me an idea as to the type of person I’m dealing with.